Sector: Renewables

29th January 2025

Knowledge Type

Report

Organisation

Green Alliance
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Mind The Gap: Cutting UK Transport’s Climate Impact

This report from Green Alliance outlines how current UK transport policies fall short of net zero targets, projecting a 97MtCO₂e emissions gap by 2032. It proposes targeted, quantifiable actions such as accelerating EV uptake, improving public transport, and curbing aviation growth to close this gap and deliver wider social and environmental benefits.

Attachments

Mind the gap : Cutting UK transport’s climate impact
29th May 2025

Knowledge Type

Report

Organisation

House of Lords Industry and Regulators Committee
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Power struggle: Delivering Great Britain’s Electricity Grid Infrastructure

The House of Lords Industry and Regulators Committee’s report, Power Struggle: Delivering Great Britain’s Electricity Grid Infrastructure, published in June 2025, provides a comprehensive examination of the UK’s electricity grid’s current challenges and future requirements. The report underscores the grid’s pivotal role in achieving the government’s clean power target of 95% decarbonisation by 2030, highlighting the necessity for accelerated development of energy generation and network infrastructure. It delves into the complexities of planning, regulation, and delivery of energy infrastructure, emphasizing the need for strategic reforms to meet the nation’s decarbonisation goals.

Attachments

Power struggle: Delivering Great Britain’s Electricity Grid Infrastructure
18th June 2025

Knowledge Type

Guidance/Good practice

Organisation

HM Treasury National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority
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UK Infrastructure: A 10 Year Strategy

The UK’s 10‑Year Infrastructure Strategy commits at least £725 billion to a coordinated, decade-long programme of infrastructure investment — spanning maintenance, economic assets (like transport, energy, digital) and social infrastructure (such as housing, healthcare, schools, prisons) — under the newly formed National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority (NISTA). It introduces long-term capital settlements, greater devolved delivery, and an interactive, place-based infrastructure pipeline aimed at boosting productivity, ensuring net-zero alignment, and improving public services.

Read our blog analysis for key takeaways on what the strategy means for major project delivery, governance, and funding.

Attachments

UK Infrastructure: A 10 Year Strategy
22nd June 2025

Organisation

UK Government
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The UK’s Modern Industrial Strategy 2025

This policy paper published by the UK Government outlines a modern Industrial Strategy aimed at supporting long-term economic growth across a range of sectors, including clean energy, life sciences, construction, and artificial intelligence. The strategy sets out a framework for addressing structural challenges such as skills development, infrastructure investment, and research and innovation. It also introduces sector-specific partnerships and policies designed to encourage productivity and competitiveness.

For insights on what this strategy means for major project delivery, see our blog post: From strategy to systems: What the UK’s Industrial Strategy 2025 means for major projects.

Attachments

The UK's Modern Industrial Strategy 2025
19th May 2025

Knowledge Type

Video

Organisation

Major Projects Association
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Video: ‘No Planet B! So, what can I do?’ Major Projects Sustainability Playbook

Following our seminar ‘No Planet B! So, what can I do?‘ held in April 2024, the Association worked hard with colleagues from KPMG to create a Sustainability Playbook which incorporates key lessons and learnings from the event.

The Major Projects Sustainability Playbook was developed to support project professionals in defining, procuring, designing, constructing and operating sustainable projects. It complements and signposts the myriad of existing guidance and standards that already exist for professionals from all project lifecycles stages, aiming to support practitioners of all types. Going beyond cost, time, scope and risk, this playbook aims to support project teams to consider nature and biodiversity, carbon and the environment, resilience and adaptation, and social value throughout a project lifecycle. 

In this presentation, Janet Greenwood, Global Lead for Sustainable Infrastructure at KPMG and Chair of the Sustainability Ambassador Network, presents the Sustainability Playbook’s origins and outlines how the Playbook supports professionals to embed sustainability into every phase of major projects.

This presentation was given at the virtual event Building Green Britain – The projects we need, in a culture that delivers on 30th April 2025.

Access the Playbook here: Major Projects Sustainability Playbook | Major Projects Association.

Find out more about the Major Projects Association Sustainability Ambassador Network here.

July 22nd 2024

Organisation

London Climate Resilience Review
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The London Climate Resilience Review

The London Climate Resilience Review, chaired by Emma Howard Boyd CBE, has published its full and final report into London’s preparedness for climate impacts including heatwaves, floods, droughts, wildfires, storms, sea level rise and subsidence. The Review provides an assessment of London’s climate resilience and makes 50 recommendations for action to guide London’s preparations for more frequent and intense climate impacts.

The Mayor of London called for an independent review after parts of London received more than twice the average July rainfall in 2021, and Londoners died in 2022’s 40°C heatwave.

Alongside immediate dangers to people’s lives and livelihoods the Review found that government and businesses have not adequately planned for the disruption caused when severe weather impacts “cascade” through critical systems like healthcare, transport, energy and water.

 

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June 10th 2024

Knowledge Type

Case Study Guidance/Good practice

Organisation

Environment Agency
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Innovation Magazine

This June 2024 edition of the magazine from the Environment Agency shares innovations in streamlining asset management, decarbonisation, cost and carbon reduction on site, bioremediation, steel reduction, using hydrogen fuel cells, new coastal management techniques and much more.

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24th September 2023

Knowledge Type

Guidance/Good practice

Organisation

Boston Consulting Group Oxford Global Projects
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Five Strategies for Optimizing Power-to-X Projects

The green transformation of the energy sector is catalyzing the creation of a multitrillion-dollar investment pool. Investors are targeting the development of major capital projects, particularly in renewables and associated technologies. A standout among the technologies is power-to-X (PtX), which converts renewable electricity into hydrogen, ammonia, or other molecules as well as sustainable aviation fuel. Integrated PtX solutions could replace many of the carbon-intensive chemicals and liquid fuels used today.

To capture the emerging PtX opportunities, developers will need to overcome challenges posed by complex interdependencies, nascent technologies, new regulations, and uncertain market conditions. The challenges are evident in the schedule estimates for PtX projects, which range from seven to nine years from initial feasibility studies to beneficial operations. These protracted timelines increase the financial and scheduling risks, creating greater uncertainty in the market.

Boston Consulting Group and Oxford Global Projects have developed a new approach for these large capital projects. Encompassing five strategies, the approach will help accelerate completion time for Power-to-X projects while increasing their value. Mastering this innovative approach requires radical changes in project capabilities and governance — but companies that succeed will gain a significant competitive edge, potentially becoming major players in this emerging sector.

 

 

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6th June 2023

Knowledge Type

Podcast

Organisation

Major Projects Association
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Podcast: Emerging Markets

Summary

Listen on Apple Podcasts | Podbean | Spotify | Audible | YouTube

Emerging markets for major projects can take many forms, including new geographies, new economic models, and new technologies.

In this podcast, drawing on the ideas from the Association Seminar, Emerging Markets – Opportunities and Threats for Major Projects, Andy Murray is in conversation with Stephen Beatty of KPMG, Dr. Zeynep Kurban of GHD, and Sam Mercer of Xlinks.

Through the lens of some of the latest developments in power generation, they explore the challenges and opportunities associated with emergence. One of Xlink’s HVDC transmission projects involves manufacturing and laying a 4000 km cable from a solar and wind energy facility in Morocco to the UK, where it can provide the power for seven million homes.

Dr. Zeynep Kurban brings us up to date with what’s going on with hydrogen power generation, an industry that is on the cusp of switching from hype to real delivery.

Both these industries ask fundamental questions of the major projects sector:

  • What will be the demand and how do we assure the requisite infrastructure is in place with the requisite investment in such an uncertain and fast-changing technology marketplace?
  • What are the different, alternative options for delivery?
  • How do we develop the capability we need against a schedule which requires much of this is in place in less than seven years?
  • What about the resources, in an environment where mega-projects are increasingly competing for people and raw materials?
  • How do we sustain the sense of urgency?

The emerging market is exciting and fast-changing in equal measure and holds the potential for projects that can transform our nations and our planet. However, Major Projects will need a root and branch rethink in terms of process, human capital and finance, if the sector is to come close to realising what is needed.

17th February 2022

Knowledge Type

Research Paper

Organisation

Elementa Consulting
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Whole life carbon of photovoltaic installations

Summary

Whole Life Carbon of PhotovoltaicsThis study investigates the embodied and operational carbon impact of roof mounted solar photovoltaic (PV) installations. It includes an in-depth assessment of the embodied carbon of PV systems and frames a discussion on the most relevant metric for making decisions on the installation of PV.

Photovoltaic (PV) is an important source of renewable energy generation, and rooftop solar can contribute a significant part of the government roadmap to meet UK climate targets. This paper explores the interplay between embodied carbon impact and the operational carbon savings for various roof mounted PV system installations.

This study concludes that a ‘payback’ approach for PV installations (i.e. embodied carbon impact compensated by the operational carbon savings) is not the right metric while we are in midst of an energy transition towards 100% renewables. Embodied carbon will have to be invested to achieve full grid decarbonisation and rooftop solar PV should continue to play a vital role in supporting this transition. Nevertheless, the study found that the embodied carbon to be between 520 – 780 kgCO2e/ kWp, which is less than the operational carbon savings over a 25-year study period based on a UK grid. The study concludes that rooftop solar PV can
represent a valuable investment of embodied carbon, but that built environment professionals should employ detailed embodied carbon assessments to ensure that impacts are minimised through intelligent design and specification decisions on a project-by-project basis.

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